Underperforming hurts…

I took a couple of “Sick Days” to wrap up year end business with Futurelooks and personal stuff.  I know.  I’m bad. LOL!  Anyways, I decided to run some comparisons between the site from this year to last year in terms of dollars in revenue. 

To my dismay, I had left so much money on the table that I should just be taking the money out of the bank machine, sticking it in a bucket, and lighting it on fire.  In the first two periods of this year, the site has quintupled the revenue brought in over last year.  Even with expenses from Las Vegas during CES and some infrastructure changes to make way for sites like LaptopLifestyle plus the sites that will follow.  Add to that three times the net profit over last year in the same two periods, and I’m just kicking myself for not fixing things sooner!

So what changed?  Two things: Proper Google integration and capitalizing on the Dealtime Program.  Google revenue tripled in the first two periods compared to last year, while Dealtime revenue doubled.  I worked hard during my accident recovery in 2005 to make the site as efficient as possible in terms of monetizing every page view.  Now, it was just a matter of pumping out content.  In fact, I know that a couple sites out there with nearly double my traffic can only manage to match my revenues, and they are nearly full time.

So underperforming hurts.  The best thing to do is to stop doing it and do everything possible to prevent it from happening again.  On a site that uses only Google, that should be your top performer (unless you’re using Dealtime).  If it isn’t, you’re going to need to tweak until you get it right.  If you’re doing your site full time, take a couple days off, and come back to it with fresh eyes.  It’s easy to get stuck in a rut and not notice the obvious.  If you only do it part time, take a week off from other stuff and tweak till you get the formula right.  You’ll spend the same amount of time on your site afterwards, but make a lot more money.  Talk about giving yourself an instant raise!

When my sites finally get a full time Editor in Chief behind the wheel in May, I can only imagine what great things will happen.  I am truly inspired, even though I can’t believe I left all that cash on the table!